Article December 9, 1911 Issue

FROM OUR EXCHANGES

with contributions from T. Rhonda Williams, R. F. Horton, Herbert A. Jump

[Rev. T. Rhonda Williams in Christian Commonwealth.]

Jerusalem was to be established in the top of the mountain; that is, it was to be in a position of preeminence and command. But it was there because of its character and its truth. It was to be there by virtue of its inherent worth and attractiveness. "The nations shall flow unto it." This does not indicate an iron supremacy, or superiority through terror; it does not picture Jehovah, as the prophets often did, subduing the nations to Israel, breaking them with a rod of iron; it thinks rather of the nations feeling in Jerusalem a magnetism drawing them to itself. "The nations shall flow unto it," as if they felt that their life also was in it.

Would that we could think of qualifying to get this sort of power in the world! Our national arrangements for power are mostly of a very different kind; our means are battleships, because our ambitions are too material. How glorious it would be for a great nation like ours to have power in the world by reason of the quality of the truth we believed in, and our fidelity to it in private and public life! I do not mean to suggest that the British empire has no character that gives it an influence in the world. It certainly has, and we should be thankful for our measure of true power. All the same, it is not an uncommon thing abroad to find men believing that there is a very wide disparity between our moral professions and our political practices, and while there may not be as much disparity as a stranger would sometimes make out, there is undoubtedly too much. We would be better liked than we are if we acted more faithfully upon the high principles we often profess. Politically the Christian nations are now established in the top of the mountains; the greater part of the civilized world is under their dominion; but Christianity is not in a similar position of supremacy. And why? Because the Christian nations act so much on unchristian principles.

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